PHOTOWARE INTERFACE DESIGN FOR BETTER PHOTO MANAGEMENT

By making photo organization and photo export more effective with a well designed interface, photo management will become an easy task for photoware users... The purpose of this study wa

Ming-Liang Liu

Submitted to the faculty of the School of Informatics

in partial fulfillment of the requirementsfor the degree Master of Sciences

in the School of Informatics

Indiana University

December 2005

© 2005

Ming-Liang Liu

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES V LIST OF TABLES V ABSTRACT VI

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND` 1

Introduction to Subject 1

Importance of Subject 2

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

Photo Management 5

Photoware Interface Design 8

Performance and Preference 10

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 13

Research Questions 13

Research Overview 14

Phase 1 – Usability Test 15

Participants 15

Treatments 16

Product Selection 16

Adobe Photoshop Album 18

Google Picasa 22

Task Design 25

Phase 2 – Prototype Design 27

Conceptual Model 28

Delimitation 30

Prototype Review 30

Phase 3 – Experiment 33

Participants 33

Procedures 34

Usability Measures 35

Performance 35

Preference 36

Test Environment Setup 37

CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS 39

Phase 1: Usability Test 39

Phase 3: Experiment 42

Time-on Tasks Results 42

Interview Result 45

CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION 47

Photo Tray 47

Export Template 49

Correlation between Performance and Preference 50

CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION 51

Future Research 53

REFERENCES 55

FOOTNOTES 58

APPENDICES 59

Appendix A - Pre-Test Questionnaire 59

Appendix B - Post-test Questionnaire 64

Appendix C - Post-Test Interview Form 65

Appendix D - Usability Test Instructions (Script) 67

Appendix E - Task Description 68

Appendix F - Task log sheet 71

Appendix G - Usability Report 72

Appendix H - Questionnaire Result 78

Appendix I - Interview Results 84

VITA 90

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Adobe Photoshop Album - Main Screen 18

Figure 2: Adobe Photoshop Album - Collection List 19

Figure 3: Adobe Photoshop Album - Export 20

Figure 4: Adobe Photoshop Album - Single Photo View 21

Figure 5: Adobe Photoshop Album - Caption Editing 21

Figure 6: Adobe Photoshop Album - Caption Editing (mouse over) 22

Figure 7: Google Picasa - Main Screen 23

Figure 8: Picasa - Picture Tray 23

Figure 9: Picasa - Picture Tray (with unrecognizable images) 23

Figure 10: Picasa - Single Photo View 24

Figure 11: Picasa - Export 25

Figure 12: Prototype – Main Screen 31

Figure 13: Prototype – Single Photo View 32

Figure 14: Prototype – Export 33

Figure 15: Preference measuring scale 37

Figure 16: Scatter Plot of the Task Time Performances vs Design Preferences 44

Figure 17: Selection within the Photo Browser 48

Figure 18: Selection with the Photo Tray 48

LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Task Time for Each Task per Product 42

Table 2: Preference Scores for Each Product and Design 43

Table 3: Categories of Participants’ Preference 45

ABSTRACTDigital photography has largely replaced traditional film-based photography Lowcost and easy creation of digital files encourage people to take more photographs (photos)than before Photo management involves selecting photos for placement into albums for future review and publishing them through different media in order to share with others Photoware is designed to help people manage a large amount of digital photographs To manage digital photos more efficiently, not only does software performance need to be improved, but also the usability of the software design needs to be refined Well designedinterfaces are one of the solutions to expedite the photo management tasks.

The purpose of the study was to design a new photoware interface that would allow users to execute photo management tasks more efficiently A three-phase study wasdesigned to assess and compare Adobe Photoshop Album with Google Picasa Phase one identified two major features that were problematic: 1) visibility of images with the phototray features and 2) the non-existence of export templates that allow photo format settings

to be placed into memory for future use In Phase two, these two features were designed and implemented through paper and dynamic prototypes Phase three consisted of

usability testing of the prototypes Thirty university students participated in a task study to measure the performance of the new interface Also, user preferences were recorded through a post-task questionnaire The users performed more quickly on the interface design with the two new features, as well as preferred them over the existing products when using mean values However, the statistical correlation (Spearman - rank order correlation) between the two usability variables was not significant The lack of correlation was supported by Frøkjær et al.’s view that usability measures should be

time-on-considered independently In other words, task time performance alone cannot be used to predict general user preference, because subjective preference could be affected by a range of other factors.

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND`

Introduction to SubjectPeople are living in a world filled with digital technology Digitalization of data has made it easier to create, to reproduce and to disseminate; but managing data was more difficult than before Information overload is a term that has accompanied the emergence of digital technology People are flooded with the massive amount of digital information generated everyday The same problem is also emerging in the field of photography in recent years Digital photography is starting to replace traditional film-based photography Low cost and easy-to-create digital technology encourage people to take more photographs (photos) than before (Rodden & Wood, 2003) According to IDC’s 2003 U.S Consumer Digital Imaging Survey, 17% of its respondents took 50–100 photos per month, or equivalently, 3,000–6,000 images over a 5-year period The

percentage of digital camera ownership is still growing (1.6% in 1998, 10% in 2001, 20.2% in 2002, and 33% in 2004 (REUTERS, 2004; Tomkins, 2002) ), and more people will encounter the same problems People are overwhelmed by their photo files and it is impossible for them to deal with digital data in the traditional way Photo management software (photoware) is designed to help people to manage a massive amount of digital photographs more efficiently with the help of digital technology

With paper-based photos, people usually put them into cluttering albums

Selection is needed to put photographs into meaningful order before clustering them into albums The same tasks are still needed when it comes to digital photography Photoware does not completely take the workload away from its users; however, with careful design

it can alleviate the load of organizing photos in a more efficient and flexible way While

efficient ways for people to share photos with one another One can email photos of his/her son’s birthday party instantly to the grandparents who live a thousand miles away,

or share photos of the majestic Grand Canyon taken in a trip with friends by putting thosephotos onto their personal website If they prefer holding photos in hand, they can go to photo shops or supermarkets to print them out on paper However those processes all require different kinds of formats; some of them are to suit traditional photo formats when printing on paper, and some involve courtesies to others like reducing file size when publishing via the Internet Users have to shuffle among and remember different digital format settings to suit different needs on a regular basis To accommodate differentkinds of format settings users need to either remember them or write them down on paper

Importance of SubjectArchiving and sharing are two major activities in photo management (Frohlich, Kuchinsky, Pering, Don, & Ariss, 2002); and the two activities can be simplified as organizing photos into albums and exporting photos into different formats People usuallyarchive photos by organizing and selecting photos into albums They select “good” photos (Tomkins, 2002) and put those photos into albums with meaningful titles for future review To share digital photos with others, people need to export photos from theirphoto album collections They may print photos out on paper, email photos via the Internet, or publish on web sites By making photo organization and photo export more effective with a well designed interface, photo management will become an easy task for photoware users

To manage digital photos more efficiently, not only does software performance need to be improved but also the usability of the software needs to be refined Similar functions usually are shared among different photoware products but with some

difference in the products’ interface designs Interface differences are one of the factors that affect a products’ usability Some photoware products do an excellent job in helping people manage digital photographs easily However, they may share same usability problems Usability is mainly measured by the users’ task performance and preference of designs Nevertheless, the correlation between the two criteria was still unsure Some researchers claim the two criteria have a positive association (Nielsen & Levy, 1994), while others suggest the two variables should be considered as independent aspects of usability factors unless domain specific studies were conducted (Frøkjær, Hertzum, & Hornbæk, 2000)

The purpose of this study was to make photo management tasks more efficient through improved photoware interface design, with specific attention given to two

product features: photo tray and export template The photo tray and the export template were two interface designs aimed to facilitate two major tasks of photo management The photo tray was designed to allow users to select photos without using the complex

mouse-keyboard combination Users can use the photo tray as a temporary photo holder

to select photos from various albums and place them into a new album The export template was designed to take away memory overload in remembering repeated setting ofphoto formats The export template recorded different kind of photo settings for users Byobserving how users interact with two existing photoware products (Google Picasa and Adobe Photoshop Album1) the researcher identified existing usability problems from

which design recommendations were outlined A photoware prototype was created based

on the results of observation, from which two photoware interface features (photo tray and export template) were improved and implemented in the new prototype based on the above findings Finally, user task performance and design preferences were used as criteria to measure the degree of usability of the final photoware prototype The usability study compared user performance and user preference among two existing photoware interfaces and the newly designed photoware prototype The association between

performance and preference data were analyzed and discussed based on the photoware experiments The empirical study provided performance and preference measures that identified improvements based on new prototype design Photoware users will benefit from the two improved designs with errorless photo selection and effective photo

exporting

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

Photo ManagementSince the invention of cameras, people have been fascinated with the magic of capturing moments of life instantly Photographs have changed the way people tell stories

of their lives An early study done by Richard Chalfen (1987) shows that photography was not simply a medium for capturing facts, but also for communication Chalfen stated that photography was used as a model of interpersonal pictorial communication Differentkinds of events are captured on photos to share with family members, relatives, and friends People caption and organize photos into a set of meaningful photo collections; the term album is used for an organized print-out photo collection

With advancement in digital technology, film cameras are being replaced by digital cameras Digital cameras no longer belong to only the rich; they are available for general public to use more often and regularly than before People are using digital cameras to take more pictures than when they were using traditional film camera

(Rodden & Wood, 2003) A survey conducted by America Online (Esmele, 2004) found that close to one-third ( 31%) of younger respondents (18-49) said they take pictures several times a week; however, more than 80% of all respondents said they take pictures

at least once a month with digital cameras The survey also found that more than 70% of respondents share images with family and friends via e-mail and about one-fifth of respondents (a total of 511 respondents) send photo by using instant messages

With the growing popularity of digital photography, researchers have started to investigate how digital technology affects photo management behavior Kerry and

Kenneth (2003) carried out an empirical study investigating how people manage digital

photographs Some of their major research questions were: “How do people organize and browse through their digital photo collections, and how do their practices compare to those used for their non-digital collections?” To answer those questions they conducted a six-month long study in 2000 when digital cameras were still relatively uncommon; only 1.6% of camera ownership was digital in 1998 and 10% in 2001 (Tomkins, 2002)

Thirteen participants were given digital cameras to keep and were asked to start taking photos with them The study covered photo management of both traditional photo prints that the participants already had and digital photo files created after being given digital cameras Kerry and Kenneth’s investigation results suggested:

 Almost all of their participants had attempted to organize their photos by putting them into albums (folders)

 Usually only the “good” photos were placed into albums, and separated them from the “bad” ones, which may be technically poor or boring Someparticipants threw the bad photos away, but others kept them in the

original packets

 Prints in albums were looked at more often than those left in the packets

 Albums were mostly classified by specific events, such as holidays, often with one album per event

 Both digital and print photos were usually kept in chronological order, with perhaps some small adjustments to make the layout more meaningful

or aesthetic

 Almost all of the participants had changed the name of a roll, to help them identify the set of photos it contains Only three of thirteen participants

had changed the name of a single photo, and in general this was

considered far less important than changing the name of a roll Longer descriptions can be entered as text annotations, which only two

participants had done, or recorded as spoken annotations, which eight had done

 The participants said that the frequency with which they look at their photos tends to decrease over time

 The participants were much more prolific in taking photos after starting to use a digital camera With digital cameras, people are more willing to take

“risky” photos (because if the picture does not turn out as intended, they have lost nothing) and “everyday” photos (because they do not have to save the film for a special occasion)

 Copying a digital photo is trivial compared to copying a print, and this may make people more likely to share their pictures, especially as more of them gain access to the Internet, making physical distance irrelevant Almost all of the participants had sent small numbers of photos via e-mail,and some had created special web pages to make larger sets available

 All of the participants still wanted to have prints of their photos for certainpurposes, for example to look at without having to switch on a computer

or television, or to send to someone who does not own a computer

Usually, they only wanted to have selected photos printed out

 Digital editing was relatively uncommon; those participants who did want

to edit their photos tended to use more specialized applications (such as Photoshop)

Photoware Interface Design

To help people manage a massive amount of digital photo files, software

developers created photoware to help users manage photos more efficiently Many

researchers also put efforts into improving the usability of the photoware interface design

In addition to Kerry and Kenneth’s research, a recent study (Frohlich, Kuchinsky, Pering, Don, & Ariss, 2002) funded by Hewlett Packard was conducted in a similar fashion The research team recruited 11 families from Northern California area to identifyphoto-sharing practices Their technique combines ethnographic field observation, and interviews and self-recording techniques The team proposed requirements for future photoware design based on the user requirements they found in the study (in which most

of the findings were consistent with Kerry and Kenneth’s):

1 REMOTE SHARING

a Photo-conferencing tools

b Multi-user album software

c Instant photo sharing

2 SENDING

a Reprint mini-albums

b Joint accounts on photo websites

c Instant photo sending and feedback

3 ARCHIVING

a Special project mini-albums

b Indexing and audio-annotation

4 CO-PRESENT SHARING

a Augmented prints

b Recording of storytelling conversations

As the studies above indicate, photo organization is a major activity on photo management Researchers came up with the algorithm to automate the process of

clustering photos into collections (M Cooper, Foote, Girgensohn, & Wilcox, 2003; Stent

& Loui, 2001; Suh & Bederson, 2004); however it still cannot be completely automated Organizing photos into albums involved certain levels of subjective judgments To put what kind of photos into albums depends on the characteristics of albums users defined Different people may use different standards, such as chronology or geography, to create their own photo albums

For some researchers the way photos are presented is more important to help users organize photos To put photos into albums, people normally need to select small sets of photos from their collections by either browsing or searching Browsing and searching are the two major techniques in finding information, and they have different characteristics Browsing involves navigation through an information collection, and searching involves specification of queries to retrieve information from a database

(Waterworth & Cingnell, 1991) Therefore, searching normally is preferred by domain experts who are looking for a specific image, and browsing is preferred by those who

have no specific goal in mind (Frost et al., 1999) Moreover, for computers to search files,

these files should be understandable to computers That is, structured data (normally text)

should be used for file searching Currently, time is the only metadata recorded at the moment of picture taking Other metadata, such as who (people) (Suh & Bederson, 2004)and where (location) (Toyama, Logan, & Roseway, 2003) can also be added

automatically by using other techniques, which are still not feasible right now Therefore, users currently still need to add metadata manually in most of the photoware

To make browsing through large photo collections easier, information

visualization techniques are needed Some studies suggested that a zoomable image browser and 2D grid of thumbnails is useful to minimize the incorrect image selection from a large number of images (Combs & Bederson, 1999) Also, Rodden and Wood’s study (2003) suggested that sorting by chronological order and displaying a large

number of thumbnails at once are the most important features to support However, putting visually similar photos together is helpful only when users have a particular requirement in mind Otherwise random arrangements may be more useful (Rodden, Basalaj, Sinclair, & Wood, 2001)

Performance and PreferenceUsers have limitations and prone to error A well designed interface is essential to help users make use of powerful digital technology while accommodating human

characteristics A well designed interface is a usable interface, and usability is measured

by various criteria According to the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) definition, the usability of a product is determined by effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction (ISO 9241-11) For usability experts, Jakob Nielsen and Ben Schneiderman, usability is part of the usefulness and is composed of learnability, efficiency of use, memorability, few and no catastrophic errors, and subjective satisfaction Nevertheless,

most researchers simplified them into performance and preference The objective

performance is mostly being used in ergonomics to measure efficiency, and subjective preference is used in marketing to know users’ choice of products To measure

performance, task completion time is the most used among interface studies while some also take error rate and task completion rate into account A Likert scale is the most used method to elicit user preferences on interface design

Regarding the correlation between performance and preference, Nielsen and Levy(1994), performed a meta-analysis that analyzed interface studies published between

1982 and1991 to learn if there is a relationship between the two variables Among 1,937 studies they collected, only 57 research papers were selected for them to measure both objective and subjective comparative data And a total of 113 comparisons between interfaces were extracted from 57 studies They found positive association between the users’ performance and their subjectively expressed preferences The study suggests that

80 out of 113 studies show that when users like a system they perform better, while the other researches presented as no association between preference and performance

However, due to a data availability constraint, they could only find the average values of performance and preference scores from those studies Summarized data (mean values) alone may not be significant enough to represent the data group they belong to, and used them to further calculate the correlation between performance and preference by using statistical methods A statistical paradox, Simpson’s paradox (Simpson, 1951), could appear when trying to use summarized data to analyze group result In some situations, the successes of several groups seem to be reversed when the groups are combined This

seemingly impossible result is encountered surprisingly often in social science and medical statistics.

Frøkjær, Hertzum, and Hornbæk (2000) extended Nielsen and Levy’s research and conducted another study They emphasized the comparison of three usability aspects: effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction In the study, task completion time was used to measure efficiency, quality of the solution to measure effectiveness, and multiple-choice survey to collect user satisfaction The weak correlation between measures of

effectiveness and efficiency was found in their study Therefore, they suggested that efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction should be considered independent aspects of usability, unless domain-specific studies suggest otherwise However, they did not

measure all three usability aspects; only efficiency and effectiveness were used and analyzed in their study The correlation among the three aspects was only being

discussed at the end of their paper by using three other prior studies

In addition to Simpson’ paradox, another possible cause for the different

conclusion in Nielsen and Levy’s and Frøkjær et al.’s studies could be the weakness of meta-analysis (Wikipedia):

The weakness of the method is that sources of bias are not controlled by the method A good meta-analysis of badly designed studies will still result in bad statistics Robert Slavin has argued that only methodologically sound studies should be included in a meta-analysis, a practice he calls 'best evidence meta-analysis' Other meta-analysts would include weaker studies, and add a study-level predictor variable that reflects the methodological quality of the studies to examine the effect of study quality on the effect size

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY

Research QuestionsThe purpose of this study was not to improve photo clustering automation or to invent a new technique that improves user browsing Rather, the focus of the study was tounderstand if the design of the photo tray and export template features actually help usersmanage photos more efficiently and were preferred by users According to past studies, asseen above, photo management involves archiving photos into albums and sharing them with others With the improved design of photo management features, tasks can be made easier for photoware users

The study uses task performance and user preferences as two variables of

usability testing of two interface designs Finally, a correlation between performance andpreference was done to further support Nielsen and Levy’s and Frøkjær et al.’s study Five research questions were proposed:

Q1: On average do users spend less time on selecting and moving photos into albums

when a photo tray is present?

Q2: On average do users spend less time on exporting photos into a repeated format when

an export template is present?

Q3: On average does the interface design with a photo tray preferred by users?

Q4: On average does the interface design with an export template is preferred by users? Q5: Is there a correlation between the performance and preference in the interface

designs of the photo tray and the export template?

Research OverviewPhase 1 – Usability test:

1 Questionnaire

2 Think-aloud user testing

3 Interview

Phase 2 – Prototype design:

1 Analysis of usability problem

2 Development of the photo management prototype

The study consisted of three phases In the first phase, a usability test was

conducted to evaluate the existing photoware products and to discover possible usability problems by observing participants The data collected from the usability test served as design recommendations for the new product prototype in the second phase In the third phase, an experiment was to test the performance of the new product interfaces The new product with the photo tray and the export template features were compared with one of the existing products from the first phase by recording task time of participants spent

Each participant was asked to perform photo management tasks on the two products in both the first and the third phases No voice or video recording was used and only note taking was applied during the usability test and experiment

Phase 1 – Usability TestPre-Test questionnaire was given to participants to collect general demographic information, digital photography and image management experience Participants were asked to perform five photo management tasks on each of the two pieces of photoware products (Google Picasa and Adobe Photoshop Album) in the usability test session During the usability test, the think-aloud protocol was employed to help the researcher understand the things that could not be observed directly during the usability test

Participants were asked to speak out what they were thinking while performing tasks Participants were reminded to speak out especially while they were not doing any

specific operation or seemed to be pondering

After the test, a short interview was administered to collect qualitative data that could not be obtained from the close-ended questions Participants were allowed to go back to see and play with the products they performed tasks on to recall past problems and to give their opinions

Participants

Participants were recruited from the Indiana University-Purdue University

Indianapolis (IUPUI), and most were IUPUI undergraduate students University students were chosen for this study primarily because younger people are more willing to make use of digital technology than others (Esmele, 2004)

Twelve participants were recruited for the usability test On average 75% were 21 years old 58% participants were males and 42% were females; 58% undergraduate students and 42% graduate students Most of them were familiar with using computers

(58% participants had 8 years computer experience, while 16% had over 10 years.) Microsoft Windows was the operating system used by all participants.

Because the focus of my research was on digital photograph, it is important to collect data about the participants’ degree of exposure and use of digital cameras In sum, digital cameras were familiar to a majority of participants; 83% participants or their families own digital cameras, and have been using digital cameras for at least two years Most of the participants (75%) were using digital cameras monthly 70% participants whoown digital camera had taken over 100 photos in the last month and over 500 photos in the prior year Trips were the major events the cameras were being used

They all clustered photos into collections, however, most of them (83%) were stillusing files and folders to manage digital photographs, and only two were using

photoware ACDSee2 was being used by 50% participants, while two other photo editing photoware were being used by another 16% participants 58% participants converted photos into other formats for email, website, and then printing Photo formatting

encoding was mostly needed and then image size 41% participants converted photos monthly and three did it biannually in average

Treatments Product Selection

To select photoware products for this study, ten pieces of photoware3 were

reviewed by the researcher; four were bundled with digital cameras and six were sold independently Only photoware products that focus on photo management were reviewed because photoware is a general term for software related to digital photography

However, some photoware products may focus on photo editing and others aim at photo

managing or other specific functions The study was solely focused on photo

Adobe Photoshop Album and Google Picasa were the photoware selected for this study The reason the research chose these two photoware products was that they were both PC-platform applications which were more familiar to most computer users This was because of the market share of the PC (Smith, 2005) Another reason was that they minimize the possible effects on platform difference

Adobe Photoshop Album

Figure 1: Adobe Photoshop Album - Main Screen

Adobe is a company famous for its photo editing software, Photoshop, and the Adobe Photoshop Album is the same company’s product that focuses on helping users to manage photos The main screen of Adobe Photoshop Album (see Figure 1) contains two major areas: photo browser and collection list Collection list shows all the photo

collections The collections are the terms in the application to call albums By selecting a collection in the collection list, users can see all the photos inside the collection To show more images in the photo browser, users can adjust a slider at the bottom of the photo browser to change the photo thumbnail images size To select multiple photos, using

meta-keys is the only method Users cannot use drag-to-select or other alternatives to select many photos at a time in Adobe product.

Figure 2: Adobe Photoshop Album - Collection List

To select a collection and show photos in the collection, users have to double click

on the collection (see Figure 2) An alternative to achieve the same goal is to check mark

a collection by clicking on the square next to the collection The highlighted collection does not mean its photos are displayed in the photo browser; only when a telescope appears in the square of the collection, photos inside a collection are shown in the photo browser On top of the collection list, three icons are provided to do the functions of creating new collection, deleting a collection, and edit a collection

Figure 3: Adobe Photoshop Album - Export

The export function (see Figure 3) allows users to convert photos into different sizes and formats and then save into a folder defined by users Users can export photos for different kinds of applications For example, users can convert photos into smaller size, so it is faster to send them with emails Four kinds of file type (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and PSD) are provided A review window at the left shows all the photos to be exported Users can make sure correct photos are chosen to be exported

Figure 4: Adobe Photoshop Album - Single Photo View

In the single photo view (see Figure 4), users are allowed to add a caption to describe a photo The caption editing area is located at the bottom of the screen Usually the caption editing area shows a description “Click here to add caption” (see Figure 5) When users move a cursor over the area, the outline of the area will appear to get users’ attentions (see Figure 6)

Figure 5: Adobe Photoshop Album - Caption Editing

Figure 6: Adobe Photoshop Album - Caption Editing (mouse over)

Google Picasa

Picasa is a product of the famous online search engine company, Google Like most of the photoware, Google Picasa also has a photo browser (called LightBox in Picasa) and a list to show photo collections (see Figure 7) Instead of showing collections separately like most photoware products do, Picasa puts all the collections in a long list within the photo browser To show photos in a collection, users can move from one collection to another by dragging the scroll bar control next to the browser without switching screen views Like most of the photoware products, users also can adjust photo thumbnail image size in the photo browser by using a slider In addition to the photo browser and the collection list features, a picture tray is provided The picture tray is designed to help users select photos from different collections To select and place photosinto the tray, users select photos first and then either press a “Hold” button at the photo tray or drag photos into the tray

Figure 7: Google Picasa - Main Screen

Figure 8: Picasa - Picture Tray

Figure 9: Picasa - Picture Tray (with unrecognizable images)

However, when too many photos are put into the picture tray, it is difficult for users to recognize photos inside the tray (see Figure 8 and 9) Images inside the tray become too small to see Users are not able to adjust the size of the tray or change the

thumbnail image size inside the tray, so the photo tray only serves the function of a photo holder when too many photos are selected.

In the single photo view (see Figure 10), Picasa provides many functions for image editing Users can remove redeye, crop an image, adjust image color, and more Also to add a caption to describe a photo, users can edit the caption right below the photo To let users know where to edit the caption, Picasa only uses a description “Make

a caption!” in the caption editing area It does not have other designs to get users’

attention like the Adobe product does

Figure 10: Picasa - Single Photo View

Figure 11: Picasa - Export

The export function in Picasa (see Figure 11) provides functions similar to

Adobe’s It allows users to adjust image size and image quality However, users can only convert images into JPEG format

Participants were asked to perform five photo management tasks listed in task description sheets (see Appendix E) on each photoware product Tasks were written in scripts to make sure all the participants receive the same information before performing tasks The same tasks were used in both the usability test and the experiment However, the usability test only focused on finding usability problems and the experiment on measuring task time performance Five photo management tasks were given to

2 Participants were asked to export photos from a photo collection and change photos into format A

o Task 2 was used to help participants learn the photo export function by exploring the product It was also used to discover possible usability problems Moreover, in the experiment participants were able to familiarize themselves with export function before their performances were actually recorded in Tasks

4 and 5

3 Participants were asked to select photos with different methods

o Task 3 tested for photo selection performance; the most difficult of the tasks All the photos to be selected were scattered, and users were forced to use either the photo tray (if available) or the combination of meta-keys and mouse buttons to select photos It was to simulate the photo selection behavior for putting photos intoalbums; people usually select only good photos into albums for future review The methods users used were recorded on to the tasklogging sheet (see Appendix F).

4 Participants were asked to perform photo export task by using photo setting format B

o The purpose of Task 4 was to assess the time users spend after theyhad learned how to use the export function in Task 2

5 Participants were asked to perform photo export task by using photo setting format A

o Task 5 evaluated the time users spent on using the prototype’s export template Users were required to use export template in the prototype

Phase 2 – Prototype DesignProblems participants encountered in the usability test were recorded and possiblesolutions were listed in the usability report (see Appendix G) The findings were

incorporated as design recommendations for the new product

Microsoft Visual Studio.NET was the tool used to create the new product

prototype Visual Studio.NET provided an assortment of standard components for its

users to create Windows applications It was suitable for creating the dynamic prototype running on the Windows operating system in a short time.

Conceptual Model

Based upon the data collected from the prior usability test and prior studies, a photoware prototype was designed and developed The prototype provided five interface features to support photo management tasks:

1 Photo importing – Photo image files are usually captured by digital cameras Before doing photo management tasks, users have to upload their photos from

a memory card onto a computer system An import function allows users to import photos from external devices into the photoware application

2 Photo categorization – As the literature review suggested, people usually categorize photos into collections for future review “Albums” is the best term

to convey the purpose of these photo collections in a photoware product Unlike a paper-based photo, a digital photo file can be included in multiple albums without having duplicate copies To review photos in albums, an Albums List was provided for users to browse through created albums

3 Photo browsing – A photo browser was used to display photos in albums The photo browser was located alongside the albums list When users use the single click to select an album in the albums list, photos in an album will be displayed in the photo browser To display more photos in the photos browser,photos were represented by thumbnail images However, users can adjust the size of thumbnail images They can use big thumbnail images when they are

looking for a photo and use small thumbnail images to show more photos in the limited space.

4 Photo selection – A photo tray was designed to help users select photos from apool of photos imported from external devices into albums Users are able to drag and drop photos into the photo tray as they do with paper-based photos

To minimize the mouse moving distance when using drag-and-drop, an alternative was provided in the context menu: users can use the “Add selected photos to photo tray” in the context menu to add photos into the photo tray more quickly The photo browser is usually the focus of photoware users and

it takes most of the screen space However, when users are doing a photo selection task, the photo tray could become their focus Users are able to adjust the size of the photo tray and the photo browser when the focus is changed Also, resizable thumbnail images allow users to adjust the visibility and number of photos shown in the photo tray and compare photos side by side with images in the photos browser

5 Photo exports – Export function is similar to “Save As” in most of the

applications The difference is that “Save As” handles only one file at a time while the export can deal with more than one file The main purpose of using such a function is for users to change photos into a format that is different to the original According to questionnaire results, the image size was mostly being changed (and then image quality and image encoding) during the exporting process, and users usually transform photos approximately once a month To take the workload of remembering format settings away from users,

these settings can be saved as different export templates for different

platforms When the same setting is needed, users only need to recognize the name they have given to the template without recalling all the settings

Combined with other applications, the export function becomes the only placefor users to publish photos Users can email photos with an email client application or backup photos with file archive software It simplifies the complexity of the functions in the menu and is easier for users to locate and

do all the export tasks

Delimitation

The prototype was used to test user performance task speed and preference while using the photo tray and the export template The only functions that were needed in the photo management tasks used in the study were implemented in the prototype Functions that were not related to this study only have the “looks” and had no functionality (users could not edit images in the prototype for example)

Prototype Review

The main screen of the prototype can be dissected into four parts: Album list, Folder list, Photo browser, and Photo tray (see Figure 12) The album list shows all the album collections a user has created With a single click on an album in the album list (or

a folder in the folder list), the photos browser shows all the photos in the album (or in the folder) Users can use the image size slider to adjust the size of the thumbnail images in the photo browser to either show more images or fewer images on a limited screen space

The photo tray is located at the bottom of the main screen Users can drag and drop images from the photo browser into the photo tray or vice versa The photo tray is

not the only way to select photos Users can also use meta-keys to select photos if users feel confident using them With another image size slider available on the photo tray, users can display different sizes of thumbnail images in the browser and in the tray Userscan drag and drop photos into an album in the albums list The highlighted text is used to indicate an album is ready to receive photos when users drag photos over the album Also, content related functions are available in context menus to provide shortcuts for corresponding functions in the drop down menu.

Figure 12: Prototype – Main Screen

Figure 13: Prototype – Single Photo View

Figure 13 shows the single photo view screen after users clicked a thumbnail image in the main screen Here, users are able to navigate through photos in an album and

do basic image editing (that was available in most photoware) for the photo displayed on screen The caption can be added at the bottom of the screen To help users notice the caption and know it was editable, the caption area was indented and its border color changes when users move the cursor over the area Based on the findings from the

usability test, the caption function was also added in the context menu after users right clicked on the image

Users can specify the format settings before exporting photos (see Figure 14) Once settings are saved as an export template, users can select it from the list on the upper left of the screen Using export template minimizes the export task into only two